Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Return of the Evil Spirit; Obama Lies and the Gutting of Welfare Reform

Timothy Birdnow
The Obama Administration and its cronies in the mainstream media are in full damage control mode over the Obama Executive Order removing the work requirements for welfare recipients. The claim being made by the Administration and echoed verbatim by the mainstream media is that this was an act designed to strengthen state's rights by allowing states to opt out of the requirement if they can do it better - and that it was something the GOP governors of Utah and other states asked Obama to do.
One must first ask when has this Administration ever sought any empowerment of the states over the central government? Did they do so in Arizona, where the citizens voted for state laws to enforce federal immigration law? No; the Obama regime sued Arizona in an effort to force that state to stand down. Nobody can find any instance where state's rights were on the radar with Mr. Obama, yet suddenly we are being told he's the modern equivalent of Stephan Douglass, pushing a new popular sovereignty. Ri-right.
This defense fails to pass the laugh test; the Obama Administration has been actively recruiting people to join the food stamp roles in recent months, for instance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has run ads designed to recruit people to Food Stamps http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/25/news/economy/food-stamps-ads/, despite the fact that the program is paying out more than at any time in it's history.http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/news/economy/obama_food_stamps/index.htm?iid=EL
Yet we are to suspend our disbelief here and say Obama is trying to move people away from welfare assistance.
And the timing of this thing smells fishy, with it being buried in the stack of Friday forget-me-nots, the usual dumping ground for politically embarassing news. Why did Mr. Obama not tout this as a great achievement? If it is what the media is claiming then why wasn't this trumpeted as proof of Obama's Federalist heart?
Because it isn't, that's why. Obama is hurting with his base, and needs something to get the usually unmotivated underclass to jump on the bus (thoughtfully provided by the local Democratic Party machine) and vote, vote, vote. Giving away free money is one of the easiest ways to get people off their behinds. And it also increases the power of the central authority ie Mr. Obama and his socialist buds in Washington. And it pleases the radical Left, who are lukewarm toward him and who have been niggardly with their wallets toward him.
But this was a dangerous move because Mr. Obama risked hacking off middle America, the blue collar patriots and working middle class. If there is anger at the very wealthy that can be tapped in the working class, so too is there anger at the freeloading underclass; the unfairness of anybody being given a free ride gets the dander of working Americans up, and they cannot excuse the undeserving poor lazing about on free food, free healthcare, free money while they themselves work any more than they can stomach the notion of rich people lazing about while shafting the working class. It's an equal-opportunity resentment, and the Obama people (indeed, the Democrats standard issue playbook has always had to balance this) seek to feed the resentment against the wealthy but quell it against the professional underclass. It's a dangerous situation for them.
But they need that underclass to win, having largely written off the working class whites. The key is to suppress the working white vote and turn out the underclass and black vote. To do that they must offer something to the poor but discourage the working class. This is tricky, because sauce works equally well on geese and gander.
As it happens, Nevada Governor Sandoval denies that he asked for a waiver to the workfare requirements, despite claims made by the Administration and its water bearers in the media. http://www.lvrj.com/news/sandoval-nevada-didn-t-ask-for-waiver-on-welfare-program-165482836.html This is a lie, a lie designed to protect Il Duce from facing this very dillema. Jay Carney, White House spokesman, said flat out that Sandoval asked for this waiver. Sandoval denies it. Who do you believe?
According to Politico, Governor Sandoval issued this statement:
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/08/white-house-nevada-disagree-on-whether-they-agree-131391.html
""Nevada did not request a waiver and despite repeated solicitations by the administration to seek a waiver, Nevada HHS has consistently notified the Administration that Nevada has no intention of requesting one," Sandoval spokeswoman Mary-Sarah Kinner told POLITICO.
"The Obama administration's attempt to portray Nevada's comments as anything more than an attempt to increase efficiency and improve outcomes for our programs is a gross mischaracterization to advance its own agenda," Kinner said."
For those who do not remember, welfare was reformed in the mid '90's with a work requirement added that made recipients seek work or engage in job training. The Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the successor to the older welfare, has been quite successful in that the welfare roles dropped by half after the "workfare" requirements were inserted. Mr. Obama has issued orders that allow Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, to waive those rules.
(Bill Clinton vetoed two prior reform bills but was forced to acquiesce when he didn't have the votes to hold it back. The ultimate pragmatist, Clinton changed stripes and announced his support for the reform, and in an act of extraordinary historical revision is now credited with reforming welfare, something he was forced to do.)
Repealing or amending the reforms has been a major goal of the Progressive wing of the Democrat Party. http://p.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/aug/10/picket-no-tears-any-dems-over-stripping-welfare-wo/
Mr. Obama needs the support of these liberals - desperately. He needs to get the black community fired. He needs to expand governmental power; that is what he is all about. All of these required him to act now, not later. He couldn't wait until after the election.
But he can also not afford to energize the Reagan Democrats, nor can he afford to make it appear he's reinstating the welfare state. How would that look; a black man, the son of a single mother, looking to recreate the welfare queen society? He knows this stereotype will be disasterous for him; people will see it that way. He can't afford that, but he can't afford not to act, either. He was hoping this would fly under the radar, and he could have his surrogates trumpet it in closed meetings with the Reverends Jackson, Wright, and Sharpton.
Eighty three percent of the American public favor work requirements as a condition for receiving welfare. But the Left is adamant; Carthago Est Delende!
According to Robert Rector at National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313350/obama-s-attack-workfare-robert-rector
"The Obama administration claims authority to overhaul every aspect of the TANF work provisions (section 407), including “definitions of work activities and engagement, specified limitations, verification procedures and the calculation of participation rates” — in other words, the whole work program. Sebelius’s HHS bureaucracy declared the existing TANF law a blank slate on which it can write any policy it chooses.
Because HHS granted itself total authority to change any aspect of the work standards, the agency will not be bound by its state-by-state waiver approach in the future.
Moreover, HHS has made it clear that it will not accept waivers for new conservative policies. The agency’s guidance states that it will not approve policy initiatives that are “likely to reduce access to aid.” Translation: HHS will oppose any policy that reduces welfare caseloads."
End excerpt.
So much for the claims that this would only grant waivers if it decreased welfare participation; the reality is it only promises that Sebelius will make a judgement call. And that judgement call from an advocate of expanding the welfare state, and a President who has done everything in his power to expand the welfare state.
Yet Clarence Page called the Romney ad a lie on McLaughlin's program Saturday afternoon, and countless other liberal journalists have openly accused Mr. Romney of lying when in fact they and their demigod Obama are the ones engaged in open falsehood.
Folks, I have seen the terrible suffering and destructiveness of the welfare state.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Birdnow-The-Progressive-Road-to-Hell.php
It is perhaps the cruelest thing I can imagine, because it does not just steal a person's wealth, or their good name, or even their heritage, but steals their very soul. It straightjackets them into a nightmare of hopelessness, of empty days and emptier nights, of drug addiction, sexual excess, out of wedlock births, of ignorance, of despair, of a life completely wasted, of uselessness. If I were a hate-filled person and sought to honor Satan by tormenting people in a manner pleasing to the Prince of Darkness I would be hard pressed to devise a better way to do it than the welfare state.
I am mindful of this passage from Matthew12
"43“When an evilf spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”